Ingredients of the Quality Score sauce

I’m a performance specialist with the Google AdWords Team who loves trying his hand at cooking, and while working for AdWords, found the latter to be similar to it.

Today, let's take a closer look at the key ingredients that go into preparing that perfect Quality Score sauce.

Now, just like every practitioner of the culinary arts should know the difference between sauté & stir fry, before we take this discussion on the key ingredients of the Quality Score forward, it’s important that we cover the basics.

First, the relevance of a keyword is not entirely determined by its presence on the landing page or the number of times it's been mentioned on the landing page. It’s not about how appropriate we find the keyword to the product/landing page but how appropriate the users find it. In other words, the number of users clicking on your ad when they search for that keyword.

Second, when we add fresh keywords, initially, they’re awarded a historical Quality Score based on their previous performance on Google.com. And only once the keyword starts accruing statistics, the system then evaluates its Quality Score based on its recent performance. This doesn’t happen dynamically but is a gradual process.

It’s very similar to cooking, right? Just the way raw vegetables need to be cooked properly to get that perfect aroma, keyword performance too needs to be worked on to improve its Quality Score.

Finally, let's get to the crux of the discussion, a very important ingredient to the Quality Score sauce - your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR).

In this, we take into account the exact match CTR of the keyword, as it’s a better indicator of the effectiveness of the keyword. (The exact match CTR refers to the number of times the keyword has triggered an ad when the search term exactly matched the keyword.) For example, if our keyword ‘red shoes' is in broad match, it triggers our ad even for search terms like 'red shoe’, ‘formal shoes’, ‘horse shoe,’ etc. However, the exact match statistics point out exactly when the keyword ‘red shoes’ triggered our ad and was clicked on by the user when he searched for the exact search term ‘red shoes’.

The rest of the ingredients that go into determining the Quality Score sauce can be found on the link mentioned at the end of this article.

Just one last tip: Besides the performance, the number of impressions for a given keyword also plays an important role in defining the Quality Score. This means that as more and more performance history keeps building up (in terms of impressions) at your account level, URL level, and keyword level, CTR starts playing a much bigger role in defining the Quality Score.

So folks, just the way meat needs to be marinated long enough for the spices to soak in and give it that delicate yet delicious flavor, the system needs a good number of impressions to determine how well the keyword is doing!

And here’s the link that provides you with the key ingredients of the Quality Score sauce:

That’s it regarding the ingredients from my end. I’ll be happy to answer any further questions that you may have.

Happy Cooking!

Tanmay A Arora

(Wanna-be) Chef and Performance Specialist

Please remember, as this is an open forumI might not be able to take any account specific questions. You’re always free to contact us through our various support channels.

"In this, we take into account the exact match CTR of the keyword, as it’s a better indicator of the effectiveness of the keyword. (The exact match CTR refers to the number of times the keyword has triggered an ad when the search term exactly matched the keyword.) For example, if our keyword ‘red shoes' is in broad match, it triggers our ad even for search terms like 'red shoe’, ‘formal shoes’, ‘horse shoe,’ etc. However, the exact match statistics point out exactly when the keyword ‘red shoes’ triggered our ad and was clicked on by the user when he searched for the exact search term ‘red shoes’."

So it is better to work hard on your keyword lists to add new keywords that will exactly match search queries rather than be lazy by adding a few broad match keywords and allowing these broad match to expand to other search queries? Not saying that we need to have all [exact match] keywords but more like we need to work to 'exactly match' and that can be with any match type - is that right?

You said: "they’re awarded a historical Quality Score based on their previous performance on Google.com."can I conclude, that when adding "fresh-new" keywords, they are (at first) given QS with no reference to my landing page? just based on a "global average" QS for those keyword, as calculated in competitors' campaigns on google.com?

What about historical QS for keywords in French or in German ? Is the initial QS based on searches in French or in German on Google.com ONLY, or searches on Google.fr and Google.de, are included (for calculating the initial QS)?

@Kim – Bang On. It is important to look at your 'See search terms' report and add new keywords to your keyword list, which will exactly match the search query, irrespective of the match type they are in.

@Moshe – Man, those are really good questions

To answer your first question, when awarding Quality Score for a newly added keyword, we look at the average performance of the keyword in question across all accounts. However, this does not mean that the Ad words Interface prompts the message 'poor' against 'Landing page quality' and 'Landing page load time’.

So, you need to make sure that your landing page is appropriate.

With regard to your second question, let me highlight “we look at the average CTR of the keyword in question across all accounts." Hence, we do not look at the domain per say but at all the accounts having that keyword.

For e.g. the keyword 'Eau de toilette' is a French word but is used by people across the world searching for 'Perfume'.